Avigail often had arguments running through her mind and would invite Eva in only halfway through, expecting her to pick up the thread. But Eva had been thinking about her old sofa, that she’d left in the flat with Piotr, and she didn’t think now that she could face going to collect it – asking him to give back what was hers. She’d just leave it there. It didn’t matter. But she knew that if their situations had been reversed, she would have arranged for it to be returned to him. That was the problem. She would have been thoughtful, and he was being thoughtless. That was why she was bothered by the lack of her sofa.

‘It’s as if the whole of society,’ her mum continued, ‘has fallen for a bad joke. Eaten it up, like a greedy python.’

‘What are you talking about, Mum?’ Eva said with a smile, lifting the blanket that had fallen from her mum’s shoulders and wrapping it around her again. Her mum had become so thin recently.

‘We wanted to be treated as equals, that’s all.’

Eva sighed fondly. She should have known. ‘Most people feel that we are,’ she said. ‘This world is not so bad, Mum. Things could have turned out worse.’

‘We gave up everything we had, so that they had to give up their unfair advantage.’

‘Yes, I know, Mum.’

‘And then we said thank you.’

‘I don’t know what more I can do.’

‘Tell that man to give you back your sofa.’

Eva laughed and her mum moved closer, rested her head on Eva’s shoulder.

‘The moon is beautiful tonight,’ she said.

‘It’s not worth fighting for the sofa,’ Eva replied.

But perhaps, she thought now, she had been wrong about that.

She looked sideways at Piotr, who was in silhouette with the evening light behind him. Steep hills were rising from the barren moorland either side of the tracks; hunched shoulders and crags, lined with steep black ravines between layers of snow. Above them the clouds hung so close she couldn’t tell where the mountaintop became the sky.

‘I want my sofa back.’

‘Of course,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry I kept it.’

She nodded.

‘I’ll have it delivered.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Although …’

As he paused, Eva could feel her anger returning, her fight, and she knew that if he dared try to keep it, to say it was practically his after all this time, if he—

‘… I think there might be some cat hairs on it,’ he said. ‘I’m sorry about that, too. If you like I can get it cleaned first?’

‘That’s OK,’ she said, to her surprise feeling like she could cry if she were alone. ‘That’s OK,’ she said again, and turned her eyes to look back out of the window.